The best, and Grace for the rest.

"I'm just doing the best I can..."

Gracious, I've said that a lot lately.
I know, sweet girl. I know you are. I think most of the time, we all are. We're just doing the best that we can in that moment. I've learned that being alive and living are two very different things. And there's a small gap between the two that I often feel myself sticking in like my toe in the just slightly too wide gap of the concrete below my feet. Being alive is feeling like you are always on the wrong side of that sidewalk crack. Being alive is feeling as though you are not (insert adjective here) enough so you must keep pushing, pushing, pushing.  But please, dear one, listen to me and I need for you to listen to me and not just hear these words; please let this sink into the very deepest stitches of your heart and know this: you are enough. You are enough exactly in the space that you occupy in this moment. I know that it feels like you should be doing more, being more, acting more, and you're worried that you aren't but you feel like you're doing the best that you can... and that's because that's all you really can do, darling. Don't forget to give yourself some grace. You deserve it. You have done the best you can, be that creating a new chemical formula to help one eyed dogs or getting out of bed and making a piece of toast successfully, and if I could reach through this screen and squeeze you and give you a medal for doing just that I definitely would. Just look at you go. You're amazing.

Giving grace to myself has been a lesson that I have been humbly facing a lot lately. There have been some major mess-ups along the way, don't get me wrong. I've done some things I most certainly regret having done; I've been places I do not wish to go back to whatsoever. But, really, haven't we all? And when I last cracked open my Bible, it told me that Jesus came to save the broken. He came for those who were shattered into so many pieces they saw no point in hoping to ever be whole again. He came for the ones who feel like they are completely lost in a sea of things that don't make any sense at all. He came for the sick, the lost, the mocked, the helpless, the hopeless, the wronged and the wrongdoer. Jesus came for them, and he came for you. And me. And when I look into that, I really can't seem to see much else. I sit at the base of a mountain sculpted in grace just waiting for me to ask for a pebble sized bit to cover what I've done, where I've been, who I am. And so many times, I choose to try and walk away from it. I choose to wallow in the valley of hopelessness when the peaks of grace are literally sitting in rings around me. But I'm too busy trying to grow a flower with the salt-water falling from my eyes. If I would just look up. Come, love. Come and just. look. up.

Take a step back from where you are at today. Look up from the ground below you and see the dazzling beauty waiting just ahead. Focus on your image, the one traced with the fingerprints of a God who never leaves you, and take look in the mirror and give yourself the grace that He is longing to lavish on you. He knows that you're broken and messy and feel useless. But he sees the masterpiece hiding inside the mess. Let him hold you; let him show you what He has for you.

"I'm just doing the best I can..."

He knows, dear one. He knows and he could not be prouder of you. And neither could I.

Holding you close. 

-S.